Midnight, not just the time I am swearing at when trying to grab images for these reviews, but also the name of a planet in an episode I didn’t quite remember watching before. I knew one or two shots but for the life of me, I couldn’t place a majority of the episode. In my research on other bits and pieces, I couldn’t figure out where Donna was in it, what the villain was, or anything. It was just a straight-up blank bit of my memory.

Now I know why. “Midnight” feels like a stop-gap episode to fill out the series that Russell T Davies wrote very quickly, something he is infamously good at doing. That’s not to say it was bad; it flew past as I had breakfast the other morning, oddly keeping my attention more than I thought it would. It is just the overall lack of adventure that seems to be the tipping off point in how you know, “Oh, this was written to fill out the schedule for the series, I get it.”

Confined in one room for 85% of it, a space grey-hound coach no less, it is more about the people in the episode. The problem is, I don’t like them, including the Doctor. In essence, he has become a backpacker for a day. He wants to talk to everyone, play the get-to-know-ya games, and will pull out a guitar for the road trip sing-song of “Wonderwall” and “500-miles.” I will say this as the most “British” person on the planet right now, do that around me and I will kill you. I’d give more detail of how, but we have a no swearing rule, and I’d use quite a few of those.

Trapped in a tin can full of farts on the dark side of a barren planet with the worst beings in existence means that I’d invent a Cyanide made from an iPhone battery just to get away from it. So, in short: I hate you all, and I’m going to make a piano from your teeth if you don’t shut up. Yet, as I’ve already said, it was quite a swift episode for watching even though I hate everyone. Even with those that I remember just well enough to hate, I still find “The Shakespeare Code” and “The Unquiet Dead” rather sluggish, making me hate them more than I probably should. Hate might be a bit strong, but I’m trying to get my point across.

Though I do want to depressurize a tiny bubble around everyone’s skulls, just enough to have the pleasure of seeing their eyes like burst water balloons, the concept alone is what holds you tight. Something, just a something of this planet, wants to place itself in a human, learn speech patterns, and then turn us against each other. That is what this episode is best at, what Davies perfectly captured for a show of this belief in a better humanity (very Star Trek: TNG). It reflects exactly what our problem is, ourselves.

The second we see other, the second there is something we might not feel entirely comfortable with, we want to get rid of it. We want to get away from it, we want it to get away from us, we want to kill it. Is that who we are? We come into contact with a new lifeform that is trying to learn from us, something that is trying to understand what we are, and our first instinct is to kill it? That’s showing it we fear it, giving it power, and displaying just how inferior we are. We don’t try to understand it and learn what it wants. We just have one goal of killing it.

In Series 5 Episode 10, there are a lot of questions by critics over the monster, a massive angry chicken from space. I will say it now and spoil the coming review; I love “Vincent and the Doctor,” but it was never about that monster because there was another in the episode (which is the point often missed). “Midnight,” while a stop-gap filler of an episode, is the type of horror I wouldn’t mind Who doing more often: A dark thriller questioning our inner humanity, or lack thereof in this sense.

By far it is not the best-written episode. I still have slight nightmares of that couple with Colin Morgan playing their moody emo son. Yes, I have a bit of disdain towards Morgan for the number of episodes of Merlin I’ve seen (and hated), but I’d use a brick to reform the faces of the Cane family. David Troughton, son of the second Doctor Patrick Troughton, he’s another one that’d be getting dragged to the sewing machine for a Human Centipede situation. The only slightly likable characters come from Ayesha Antoine as Dee Dee for being smart (mostly), and Lesley Sharp’s Sky because she’s also having none of this backpacker nonsense.

As a whole, it isn’t a stand-out episode in the lengthy arc we’re building towards with “Turn Left” next time, it honestly feels like filler. Good filler, like a bit of leftover Gammon that’s been perfectly cooked. The kind that you’d use to stick a wonderfully salted piece or two between two lovely bits of thick brown bread. That or forcing a big lovely bit covered in some proper gravy into a medium Yorkshire pudding. In fact, I retract that, that is far too good for “Midnight.” It is like a bit of lovely rich gravy in the middle of a Yorky. It’s not bad, but it’s not the best; then again you can’t go wrong with a Yorkshire pudding. What was I talking about again?

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Doctor Who "Midnight"

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• A great suspenseful thriller.
• Fantastic pacing keeping it light.

Cons

• I hated everyone, they are all horrid.
• Everyone, aside from the Doctor, is stupid.